EaseUS Data Recovery Review

Snap Verdict

Image loss from a card or drive can be devastating, luckily the majority of these files can be recovered using specialist software such as EaseUS Data Recovery.

The software is designed to help you recover files that have been accidentally deleted or lost due to storage failure.

Available for Mac and PC the software couldn’t be easier to use, start it up, select the drive you need scanned and hit go.

Once the scan has complete all the recoverable files will be listed; you can then select those that you want and hit recover.

In our test EaseUS recovery wizard did an impressive job, helping to quickly recover all files that had just been deleted, a high percentage of data that had been deleted recently and even managed to salvage files from corrupt hard drives and cards.

The very nature of data recovery software means that there is often very little to do from the users perspective, with the real workings and power all happening in the background. EaseUS data recovery is a perfect example, simple to use but effective as it mines deep to recover what it can.

In our test, I set the software a tough data recovery task for memory cards. This started with a simple trash recovery; then I increased the intensity by formatting the card, then overwriting with new files to see how the software would perform.

After the memory card test, I then checked a few old internal and external drives that had failed.

Overall the EaseUS performed well, recovering files on memory cards with almost 100% recovery for JPEG and RAW files from a recently deleted or formatted card.

Hard drives had a mixed result, probably due to the damage each had suffered, RAW files seemed to be the most robust, followed by JPEG and movie files.

The software did a great job, it wasn’t able to recover everything, and some files were damaged beyond repair on some of the longer standing failed storage devices. But it did pull back far more than using Terminal and many free data recovery tools.

Intro

Backing up your data is an essential housekeeping task, but while we may back up hard drives in triplicate, the same can not always be said for our memory cards and external drives.

More than once I’ve had a CF or SD card crash out on me, and then there’s the stack of hard drives that have failed in one way or another over the years. I keep hold of these in the vain hope that one day a piece of software will come along and help me recover their contents.

Now there’s EaseUS Data Recovery, a clever piece of software that’s available for both Mac and PC users.

Features

EaseUS data recovery is simple in design. Features wise it’s all automated so on the surface the application looks very straightforward.

Behind the scenes, however, is some advanced technology that’s finely tuned to recover lost data.

We may think of lost data as merely that, lost data, but in reality, there are several types depending on deletion, corruption or overwriting.

EaseUS aims to solve all without us needing to worry about the exact details of the files we’ve lost.

The full licence gives you access to unlimited data recovery, 3-step quick recovery, a clear preview of the files that can be recovered and access to technical support.

As photographers, we all know how devastating it can be to have a memory card fail on us. This is one of the significant features for EaseUS, and it’s able to recover data from Memory Stick, SD, CF, XD and MMC Cards.

Likewise, the same application can penetrate USB keys and devices with internal storage that may have become corrupt.

As well as external drives and storage EaseUS data recovery will also bring back data from standard hard drives as well as optical drives.

One issue that many Mac users will come across is data lost on deleted partitions, and this again is something that EaseUS can recover.

The three main areas of recovery are deleted file recovery, recovery from lost partitions and formatted/Raw file recovery.

Performance

EaseUS data recovery is simple in design, load up agree to the terms, and you’re ready to go.

It uses a simple 1-2-3 approach; launch select the drive you want, scan and then recover, all very straightforward.

The scan times vary depending on the type of storage being scanned. In our test, a corrupt 32GB SD card scanned in 22 minutes while a 6TB external HD was going to take 66 hours.

In the shorter case, the process of scanning through to recovery really couldn’t have been easier.

Insert the corrupted card, and a system prompt appeared on the Mac telling me the card needed to be formatted. Click Exit and then launch EaseUS

After a moment the card will mount in the software where it can be selected before clicking scan.

It’s then a case of sitting back and waiting for the software to do its thing – which for the 32GB was around 20 minutes.

Once complete you can see the files that have been recovered in the dialogue window. Here you have two views; Path or Type. Path shows you where the recovered data reside while Type shows the file type that has been recovered.

To start recovering all you need to do is select the files you wish to recover, as a whole, by type or individually, click the ‘Recover Now’ icon and all files will be retrieved from the storage medium on to a folder on your desktop.

At any point during the scanning process, you can click on the files to see what has been recovered.

The design of the interface is functional, and although it works, it doesn’t have the design flair that some other software offers.

Because of this although the software is easy to use it’s not as intuitive as you would think and there are specific small workflow issues that could be improved.

Foremost of which is the image preview.

For the test card which was 32GB EaseUS highlighted a possible 85.94GB of data in 1122 files.

This card was in regular use and corrupted some time ago – here I was impressed, and although I wasn’t able to recover some of the older files on the card those I could I downloaded to my desktop in full resolution in both JPEG and RAW.

Scrolling through showed me that while the majority of files were recovered fine, there were some especially video that were unrecoverable.

This first test with a failed card had impressed me, it recovered the files I needed and although it showed more data on the card that were unrecoverable I’d restored more than I had been able to in the past.

The next set of tests ran as follows. Fill the card with images and video and note the amount of image and video files. Run a test first of all by deleting everything but leaving the contents in the trash.

The result of which was everything was recovered so a 100% success rate. This I expected as I can do this by just clicking Put Back in the trash can.

Raising the game, the next task was to delete everything from the trash and rerun the scan. This time the scan, again on a 32GB card, took 20 minutes. After which it recovered 73% of all video files and 96% of all images on the first test using an old card.

The second more controlled test with a clean card produced a result of 100%.

The next test was to format the card. Again a good 20-minute scan and again it mined deep and was able to recover an impressive amount of files. Again looking through the files and everything bar 12 jpeg files that had been corrupted had been recovered.

Still the results for data recovery after a straight format was about the same for stills at around 96% recovery and 58% for video.

I reran the test with the clean card and even after formatting EaseUS recovered 100% of the files.

How are the files extracted

One the program has run, and you opt to recover the files, those files are saved from the card to another drive and into separate folders.

These folders are divided into different types, the first shows the card or drives partition format such as ExFat. In that folder will go all of the files from the card both lost and existing with the original file names.

The next folder is RAW; this folder contains all files from the card recovered using the RAW recovery.

RAW files: contains the files which are found by RAW recovery, and these files have no original names and are sorted by file extensions.

Lable_RAW: It also contains the RAW files, but these RAW files are sorted by tags that are extracted from the files. For example, the camera information of photos, author name of documents, singer of music files and so on.

The next test was to increase the format security to the second notch. In the past, I have found that this will defeat most data recovery software. And in this case, it did, after another 20-minute scan, nothing.

I’d pushed the data recovery ability of this software to the maximum on this front.

`When it came to the hard drives both internal and external I was less hopeful that the software would have any effect. I have to say here I was impressed and out of the five drives I tested I had about a 50% success rate with images, video and data files being extracted.

Not all files were recovered fully, but far more than I’ve been able to access in the past, a successful result.

Verdict

In the past, I’ve lost images due to storage failure, and when it happens, it can be devastating. In my case, one drive that failed was a raid drive, and it contained over five years of images captured for the job I was doing at the time.

The IT department tried to recover the files, but unfortunately, they were lost. That was well over ten years ago, and now I use multiple forms of backup with two onsite and one off-site.

But still there are times when I have an SD card fail, and in these cases, data recovery is the only way ahead.

EaseUS Data Recovery is incredibly easy to use and in our test did a great job of recovering a good percentage of files.

Recovering data from memory cards showed the best success rate, with 100% of recently deleted or formatted cards able to retrieve data.

Once that card had been re-used, and a new set of images captured then the old files that had resided on the card could not be recovered.

I was impressed with the quality of the data recovery, and if you have cards that you have accidentally deleted or formatted and not yet reused then, EaseUS Data Recovery will help you restore those files with ease.

On to Hard Drives and I had mixed success – one drive that had lost its partition was recovered quickly, and all files could be extracted. I’ve had this drive sat around for over a year, and it was great to get those files back.

Another larger capacity Drive that just went pop one day was recognised and the capacity, but unfortunately, nothing could be extracted. I fear there’s something more fundamental wrong with the thing.

As data recovery goes EaseUS Data Recovery is well worth a look – it does a fantastic job at pulling back recently deleted and formatted data from memory cards.

When it comes to hard drives it also did well pulling back long lost data with varying success, drives with lost partitions, difficulty mounting, erratic behaviour it worked at hard, and I was pleased with the results as a whole with more success than I’ve had in the past.

If you’re in need of data recovery, then give EaseUS Data Recovery a go. They offer a free trial on the website, and if it looks like you can recover your files, then the cost of the software is relatively cheap for what it does.